Russians find out another age cheat, looks like Jeanne Calment (France, 122 yo) assumed her mother's ID to avoid inherit tax

yomama wrote:

She was so old Kenya almost didn't let her compete as a Junior

POTD

She was so old she ran to school with Haile Gebrselassie

She was so old she was born in the pre-drugs era...haha, just kidding

Tracks were so slow back in the 1800s, that going from 122 years down to 99 is just a standard Ventolin conversion

Honestly, with wabbits to the bell, she could have done 95

She was so old she personally designed the Letsrun site

You think she was old? Just wait until the ultrarunners go 125 years and call it a race

Actually come to think of it: fake identity, lied about her age, said she went the whole distance when she just dropped in at year 23: she'd fit in great!

According to my calculations, she ran 717 TRILLION miles during her lifetime...take that 100,000 club!

When the proof of your theory involves two exhumations, maybe it's a bit over the top.

There was more to it than the inheritance taxes. It was also about cheating owner of house. I remember hearing about this on a Paul Harvey radio show around that time.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/29/world/a-120-year-lease-on-life-outlasts-apartment-heir.html

A 120-Year Lease on Life Outlasts Apartment Heir

Andre-Francois Raffray thought he had a great deal 30 years ago: He would pay a 90-year-old woman 2,500 francs (about $500) a month until she died, then move into her grand apartment in a town Vincent van Gogh once roamed.

But this Christmas, Mr. Raffray died at age 77, having laid out the equivalent of more than $184,000 for an apartment he never got to live in.

On the same day, Jeanne Calment, now listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest person at 120, dined on foie gras, duck thighs, cheese and chocolate cake at her nursing home near the sought-after apartment in Arles, northwest of Marseilles in the south of France.

She need not worry about losing income. Although the amount Mr. Raffray already paid is more than twice the apartment's current market value, his widow is obligated to keep sending that monthly check. If Mrs. Calment outlives her, too, then the Raffray children and grandchildren will have to pay.

"In life, one sometimes makes bad deals," Mrs. Calment said on her birthday last Feb. 21.

The apartment is currently unoccupied, according to local media.

Buying apartments "en viager," or "for life," is common in France. The elderly owner gets to enjoy a monthly income from the buyer, who gambles on getting a real estate bargain -- provided the owner dies in due time.

Upon the owner's death, the buyer inherits the apartment, regardless of how much was paid.

Mrs. Calment, who has lived through the administrations of 17 French presidents, has proven the nightmare of all those who buy real estate "en viager."

Mrs. Calment, physically active all her life, rode a bicycle until she was 100, and until 1985 occupied the several large rooms of her apartment on the second floor of a classic old Provencal building in the center of Arles, where Mr. Raffray was her notary public. She moved that year into a nursing home, which is now named after her.

She has outlived her husband, her daughter and her grandson, who died in a car crash, and has no direct descendants.

Mrs. Calment seemed to offer some consolation to the Raffrays when asked on her last birthday for her vision of the future, she replied: "Very brief."

Born in Arles in 1875, Mrs. Calment recalls working in her father's shop at age 14 and selling colored pencils and canvases to Van Gogh, the Dutch impressionist who depicted Arles in several of his vibrant paintings.

On Oct. 18, the Guinness Book of Records listed her as the world's oldest person able to authenticate her age with official records, mostly civil and religious documents.

FACT: Nikolai Zak ("mathematician") has no published papers in English/Russian, and seems to have no Ph.D.

FACT: Literally anyone can become a member of the "Society of Naturalists" at Moscow State University.

FACT: It has has no Gerontology department (no aging specialists)

FACT: Jean-Marie Robine (the co-validator of Calment's age) is one of the most famous gereontologists in France, with over 100 publications, cited over 10000 times.

Meanwhile,:Valery Novoselov, assistant professor of the Department of Gerontology and Geriatrics of RUDN University (Moscow)... sole author on his missive, and In Russia, Valery Novoselov is mostly known for his studies of medical documents of historic persons such as Vladimir Lenin. This is whom you entrust?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Society_of_Naturalists

There are a couple of problems with this. First, Calment is quite literally the best documented super centenarian ever. If she's a faker then there's no particular reason to believe the second oldest is any more valid. Second, the evidence here is circumstantial. Sure, it's a compelling story, but it's mostly speculation.

The argument that she looked younger than her years is a little dubious. Someone who lives to 122 is obviously a freak of nature. Why would we expect her to look her age? Have you seen John McCain's mother? She's 105 and looks amazing. Some people just have great genes.

This is a running website. Why do we care about this? I was wondering if this was some parallel to the Russian refusal to provide data to WADA or some other doping thing, but apparently it is about taxes... In France... tattled on by Russians...

BTW: If anyone here thinks that tax evasion by the wealthy is some sort of rare thing, you are delusional. It is common in almost every place on earth.

Everyone else in USA just moved up a spot.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/01/08/Lessie-Brown-oldest-person-in-US-dies-at-114/4941546995086

Zak started fiddling with Photoshop, examining Calment’s lower lip, the skin on her chin, the tip of her nose, and the shape of her skull at various ages. Soon he had developed a theory: the person the world had known and fêted as Jeanne Calment was actually her daughter, Yvonne.